Nicholas, now tropical storm, dumps rain along Gulf Coast
CTV
Tropical Storm Nicholas hit the Texas coast early Tuesday as a hurricane and dumped more than a foot (30.5 centimetres) of rain along the same area swamped by Hurricane Harvey in 2017, drenching storm-battered Louisiana, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of people and bringing the potential for life-threatening flash floods across the Deep South.
Nicholas made landfall on the eastern part of the Matagorda Peninsula and was soon downgraded to a tropical storm. It was about 15 miles (25 kilometres) south-southwest of Houston, Texas, with maximum winds of 60 mph (95 kph) as of 7 a.m. CDT Tuesday, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Nicholas was the 14th named storm of the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season.
Galveston saw nearly 14 inches (35 centimetres) of rain from Nicholas while Houston reported more than 6 inches (15 centimetres) of rain -- a fraction of what fell during Harvey, which dumped more than 60 inches (152 centimetres) of rain in southeast Texas over a four-day period.
The storm was moving north-northeast at 8 mph (13 kph) and the center of Nicholas was expected to move slowly over southeastern Texas on Tuesday and over southwestern Louisiana on Wednesday.
Nicholas, expected to weaken into a tropical depression by Wednesday, could dump up to 20 inches (51 centimetres) of rain in parts of central and southern Louisiana.
